


Fracture Mechanics

by hjcallipygian



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Travelers (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Author-insert, Gen, Too Many Tertiary Fandoms to List
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:55:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27727760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hjcallipygian/pseuds/hjcallipygian
Summary: The Travelers' Initiative was formed in the 25th century to save humanity after reality fractured and life across the multiverse imploded. They put together a last-ditch effort: pull twelve Parallels into artificially-created bodies, people with advanced knowledge and training to prevent the events that lead to The Fracture.I was one of them.I really shouldn't have been, though.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	1. Travelers

**Author's Note:**

> This story is primarily an AVENGERS fanfiction. The show TRAVELERS is excellent and highly recommended, but whether you've seen it won't affect your understanding of this story: I took a conceit from TRAVELERS, but no characters or storylines. In fact, you don't really need to know a whole lot about either fandom to follow this story, but the more you know the more you'll see coming. 
> 
> Characters from other, random fandoms--well, you'll see. But familiarity with anything, really, is unnecessary. The Narrator hasn't a clue what's going on.
> 
> This is an OC/author-insert, but not a self-insert, although the narrator does share traits with me. Hopefully I'll post a new chapter about once a month. Hope you enjoy...

_ Iron Man placed the device around the underwater lines and watched as it sealed itself into place. Satisfied with his work, he activated his thrusters and shot up out of the river, into the air. _

_ "Good to go on this end," Tony Stark said. "The rest is up to you." _

_ Pepper Potts, back at Stark Tower, confirmed, "You disconnected the transmission lines? Are we off the grid?" _

_ "Stark Tower is about to become the beacon of clean, self-sustaining energy," Tony confirmed as he flew toward the tower. _

_ "Well, assuming the arc reactor takes over and actually works," Pepper teased, her voice dry. _

_ "Oh, I assume. Light her up." _

_ Pepper smiled and initiated the power. Tony watched from the air in the Iron Man suit as the lights in Stark Tower turned on from the bottom up, culminating in the large STARK logo near the top.  _

_ "How does it look?" Pepper asked. _

_ "Like Christmas," Tony said. "But with more ME." _

_ "Sir, we are seeing a five-percent power bleed from the tower," JARVIS interrupted. "And now it is gone." _

_ "What?" Tony asked. "Five percent? Bleed to where?"  _

_ JARVIS took a moment to respond. "I am unsure. It was brief, I almost failed to notice it."  _

_ "Find it, JARVIS, let me know when you do," Tony instructed as he landed.  _

_ "Yes, sir." _

_ "We need to go wider on the public awareness campaign, you need to do some press," Pepper instructed…  _

\----====----

I woke up wrong.

_ "--shouldn't be waking yet! Where's the--" _

I was on my back. I never sleep on my back.

_ "--consciousness transfer completed, but that's all! No Protocols, No Legacy--" _

I mean, not NEVER never. Sometimes I sleep on my back. But if I sleep on my back, I snore.

_ "--body's breaking down the IV sedatives almost as soon as they hit the blood stream--" _

My wife's a light sleeper. So if I snore, I get poked in the ribs and told to roll over. After eighteen years of marriage, it doesn't wake me up anymore. I just roll over. 

_ "--should we do?!" _

So I shouldn't wake up like this.

_ "--open it up and brief him, I guess--wait, look, it's happening to oh-two-four-seven, too!" _

...I probably shouldn't hear strange voices in my bedroom, either. 

I opened my eyes. The first thing I saw was a glass canopy about sixteen inches above my face. Fluorescent lights hung from a concrete ceiling about nine feet above me, the four-foot types often used in commercial buildings. The wiring for the lights was exposed, the lights hung on eye-rings screwed into the concrete ceiling. Metal ventilation ducts hung from the ceiling in the same fashion as the lights, wire tied to bolts in the concrete. The effect was a very rough-industrial look; no warmth, no decoration, just function.

I reached up and put my hand on the glass - it looked wrong. My hand, I mean. It wasn't something I could immediately identify, apparently I don't know the back of my hand quite that well, but this looked…wrong. Not mine. 

A face appeared outside the glass. I moved my hand out of the way so I could see better. A woman looked down at me, her brown eyes wide. She had very dark skin, and her dark hair was pulled back. 

"Hi?" I said.

My voice sounded different, too. 

"Traveler oh-two-five-six, everything is going to be fine. Please stay calm," the woman outside the glass said. "I'm going to open this up and let you out, okay?" 

I nodded. "Yes, that sounds like a really good idea."

She gave me a plastic smile, her eyes still wide--Was she scared? Nervous? I had no idea--and punched a few buttons on the side of whatever it was I was in. Something hissed, and the glass pulled away. 

"Okay, you should go slowly--" I sat up, and she sighed, "-- or just sit right up and you'll be fine, apparently."

"Come on, Ortega, you saw his specs," a man chortled off to my right. I looked over. He stood in front of a computer on a rolling cart, his eyes on the monitor as he typed away. I couldn't make out a thing on the monitor. Not that I couldn't see it--my vision was perfectly clear, which it shouldn't have been without glasses--but it looked like flowing gibberish to me.

"Not helpful, Jenkins," the woman, who I assume was Ortega, muttered under her breath. I don't think I was supposed to hear it. She rolled her eyes, then looked down at me and said, "Hey, I'm Jennifer Ortega. How about we get you out of there, yeah? I'm sure you have questions."

I looked around at the room. I was in some sort of science-fiction medical pod thing, and there were eleven others spaced throughout the room. A bunch of men and women in white coats ran around, looking at screens, carrying wires, and doing science-fictiony things. Ten of the pods were closed. Across the room, I saw another man climbing out of a pod that was open like mine. He was bald, with grayish skin covered in bumps, and wore a pair of white boxer shorts.

I turned back to the woman beside me. "I feel like I should have all the questions," I told her, "but I don't have the slightest idea where to start."

" _ \--look like an avocado fucked an older, uglier avocado! _ " someone said from across the room. He sounded gleeful. I have no idea why that would make him happy. It really takes all kinds.

Jennifer Ortega gently put her hand on my tricep and guided me to slide around and climb out. I felt strange - I wasn't panicked or worried, but intellectually I knew I should be. I almost felt like I was watching myself from inside myself, but I was in control. Sort of.

I stood up. The concrete floor beneath my feet was warm. I expected it to be cool, for some reason, but with all the electronics and equipment in the room that would make little sense. I looked down; I, too, had on nothing but a pair of white boxer shorts. My legs were hairy and strong with thick muscle. That, too, was not how it was supposed to be. My stomach was flat with visible abdominal muscles; also, not how I looked. My chest was broad, hairy, and corded with muscles. 

That was definitely not how my chest was supposed to look.

"There you go!" Jennifer Ortega chirped. She patted my arm, then stepped back. From across the room, the strange person shouted,  _ "Oh, damn, even my dick is ribbed!" _ Jennifer Ortega winced, but kept her smile as she talked over him. "Okay, so, like I said, I'm Jennifer Ortega and I'm your liaison within the Traveler Initiative. I--"

"The what?" I interrupted.

"The Traveler Initiative. We're--"

"Is this about insurance?"

Jennifer Ortega paused and blinked rapidly, her mouth open. After a few seconds, she said, "...what?"

"Travelers," I repeated. "That's an insurance company, right?"

She looked around, as if looking for someone to confirm if this was a joke or not. She turned back to me and pursed her lips for a second before she slowly said, "No. I mean, it might be, I don't know, but that's not us." I nodded, and she continued at her normal cadence. "Okay. So why don't you walk with me?"

We started off toward my left, away from the other pods. Large lockers, which reminded me of the type NFL players got, were spaced along the wall. The one closest to us had  _ Wolf-Spider _ written on the top. "Like I said, I'm your liaison within the Traveler Initiative," Jennifer Ortega continued. "I'm here to get you up to speed. You woke up early so we have a little extra time, but you didn't get all of the imprints so there's more to cover. 

"The short of it is this: due to The Snap and The Blip, the world as we know it starts to Fracture. Realities bleed into one another, everything becomes unstable, and four hundred years in the future humanity - and all of reality - is on the brink of extinction."

Something about the way she talked reminded me of my wife, when she is about to give me two-hundred comics' worth of backstory to explain a single one-liner in a movie. I patted my stomach and said, "Uh-huh. Just skip to the part where this gives me abs."

She smirked, but continued without comment. "In the future, the survivors had access to limited data from the past. Most historical records were wiped out over the centuries. We knew when the Fracture began, roughly, and roughly how it began, but that was all. However, in the year 2438, we made two remarkable discoveries:

"The first, we discovered how to transfer a human consciousness to another body. The second, we found old social-media records from a reality where the events that lead to the Fracture were canonized in popular films."

She stopped in front of a locker and looked at me. She seemed to be waiting for something, but I didn't have a clue what. "Please tell me you're not talking about  _ The Fast and the Furious _ ," I offered.

"I-- I don't know what that is, so no, I don't think so," she said. 

I nodded. "Okay. Good. I still don't understand why I have abs, though."

"Your reality is the one that canonized history in film!" she gushed. Her eyes lit up in excitement. "We had the technology to transfer a consciousness, so we tested it - could we send it back, to the past, to change things? Traveler zero-zero-zero-one was sent back to the early twenty-first century, just before the nine-eleven attacks, and he successfully sent electronic correspondence that was saved on a server that survived until the twenty-fifth! It worked!

"So more were sent back. We all volunteered. It was so exciting!" Jennifer Ortega turned from me and looked out over the room. The bumpy guy was over at a locker maybe twenty-five feet from me, putting on a blood-red suit. Other white coats ran around the room, talking and shouting, but Jennifer Ortega ignored them all. I wondered what she saw in her mind as she continued, "To get to see the sun, breathe clean air, drink clean water -- it was heaven. But we had work to do. 

"The earliest we could pull from parallel universes was at the first instance of the Fracture. We knew it had something to do with the Battle of New York, so we kept our ears open, and finally we realized about when it would be." She sighed and turned to me, her energy seemingly spent. "Our social media records were very, very limited. We could only find twelve names we knew had the knowledge, so that's what we have, the twelve 'Parallels' as we call you, the ones who know all about  _ The Avengers _ and--"

My stomach dropped.

"--can work with them-- to--" Something in my face must have given me away. She stopped, reached up, and her hand fluttered in front of my chest. "What is it?"

"You brought me here because you thought I knew all about  _ The Avengers _ movies?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

"I wouldn't say we brought you here, it was more--" I tilted my head, and she squeaked, then hurried, "Yes, you were one of the twelve who had all kinds of Facebook posts about watching the film series!"

My anger felt like a tangible object in my chest. My hands flexed, I didn't know what to do with them. "Send me back," I growled.

Jennifer Ortega's eyes got wide and she took a step back. "I don't--"

"You took me from my wife and kids for this--This complete, utter--" I was so mad I couldn't even form a complete sentence. 

"No, no, you weren't taken!" Jennifer Ortega assured me, her voice low and passionate. "You're still there, with your wife and kids. We aren't monsters! We  _ copied  _ your consciousness here. And it's not just our world we need you to save! The Fracture affects your world, too. Your daughters - and yes, I know you have daughters - were at the very least affected by this, and at worst killed. If not them, then their kids, your grandchildren, for sure!"

I stepped back from her, all the anger taken from me. I felt empty, hollowed out. "Send me back," I said. My voice came out weak, tired, and pitiful.

"We can't," she said. She stepped forward and put her hand on my shoulder. "You're still there, you aren't gone. Your girls aren't alone. But they need you here, too." We stood there together like that for a minute, her hand on my shoulder, before she cleared her throat. "Look, take a few minutes. We put your mind through some exercises to find out about your personality and then built your body to be your ultimate warrior--"

"--The wrestler? That guy gassed out just running to the ring! What a stupid choice--"

She ignored me and kept talking. "--so you'll be strong and powerful and everything you need. You'll have the right instincts to use it. In this locker, you'll find a super-suit that is specifically designed for your use. Go ahead and put it on, I'm going to go talk to Jenkins for a minute. I'll be back, or you can come get me when you're ready."

She gave my shoulder one last squeeze, then turned and walked back to where I woke up. I sighed, then turned around to look at my super suit. I had no idea what to expect - I just hoped it wasn't a white speedo and tasseled boots, like the Ultimate Warrior always wore to the ring. Luckily for me, it wasn't. In fact, it wasn't that bad. Black pants, black boots, and a black shirt with some duct tape across the chest. Two weird wrist bracers, one for each hand. I pulled it all on and found a black hood attached to the back of the shirt. I brushed my hair back - another problem, back home I was bald since my late twenties - and pulled the hood over my head. It came down over my chin, and fit perfectly. My entire face was covered, but my vision was unobscured.

All kinds of weird, all kinds of problems, but here was the most ironic thing: 

I never saw any of those Marvel movies. Not one.

My wife was a huge MCU fan. She went to all the movies with her friends, opening night, dressed in cosplay, having a blast. She would see them multiple times, then rewatch them at home, even. As a joke, she repeatedly tagged me on Facebook as watching them with her. Everyone got a kick out of it. 

I sat down in the locker and put my head in my hands. What the fuck had I gotten dragged into?

\-----======-----

Jennifer Ortega came over to me after some amount of time and put her hand on my shoulder. "Hey, Logan, it looks like the others are waking up. You want to see this?" 

I looked up. Behind her, several dozen white coats ran around the sci-fi pods like decapitated chickens. Steam hissed out of some of the pods, and wires sparked. It all looked very serious and cutting-edge-of-science. Then the bumpy-skin guy, now dressed in a skin-tight red and black suit with two swords strapped to his back, danced through the chaos. It looked like a fusion between ballet and contemporary, mostly the latter due to his lack of pointe shoes.

I went with the most confusing thing to me. "Uh, my name's not Logan?"

She smiled at me and squeezed my shoulder. "It is now. Protocol two: leave the future in the past." This only deepened my confusion, and even with my mask on she picked up on it, as she explained, "It's 2012 now, not 2020. And you're on Earth one-five-nines; your Earth was ten-five-eighty-seven. My name wasn't originally Jennifer Ortega, but I left that in the future. You need to leave the future in your past."

"Earth one-fifty-nine? Ten-five-eighty-seven?" I repeated.

She shook her head. "Not one-fifty-nine, it's really one-hundred-ninety-nine thousand, nine-hundred-ninety-nine. So we call it one-five-nines." 

I nodded. "Right, of course, how silly of me." 

She grinned. "Okay, so this is Earth one-five-nines, and you are from Earth ten-five-eighty-seven--"

" _ What the hell did you do to me _ !?" a voice roared from behind Jennifer.

A massive, unnaturally-muscled man stood in the middle of the room. His skin was blue stone, reflecting the overhead fluorescent light with a polished shine. He had jet-black hair and a clean-shaven face, and his back had an animal-like hunch to it, the way cats and dogs looked when they sat. The white-coats around him backed away, hands up, while a woman in a gray-and-black uniform of some sort rushed over from a locker at the wall. 

The blue man threw a leg over the edge of the sci-fi pod. His foot was odd, with three big talons for toes and a sharp talon at the heel as well. He pushed himself out of the tube, and I realized he hadn't been standing before but rather sitting up in the tube - now, as he stood, a pair of large wings unfurled from his back, and the top of his head must have reached at least eight feet from the floor.

The man reached out with a massive hand and grabbed the closest white coat. "What is this?!" he screamed into the woman's face.

The white coat stammered, "You-you choose--you chose this, you chose Gargoyle as your--"

The massive man, Gargoyle, turned and threw the white coat across the room. The poor woman flew head-first into one of the computer carts and the two tumbled across a pod together.

"Sparrowhawk, no!" another white coat shouted as the woman in the gray-and-black uniform leaped forward. A blue glow wreathed her right fist as she brought it back then struck Gargoyle in the chest with an explosion of blue. Gargoyle flew back, across the whole room, and smashed back-first into the massive wall of computer equipment and coolant tanks that lined that one wall. Gargoyle fell to one knee, but quickly rose back to both feet with a snarl.

The woman, Sparrowhawk, stalked forward. The blue glow spread to surround her whole body and  _ holy shit, is that supposed to be Commander Shepard? _

"Oh, no, oh no oh no," Jennifer chanted softly to herself. "They're going to wreck everything!"

The Gargoyle and Sparrowhawk raced toward each other and smashed into a brutal fight. Although the Gargoyle stood more than two feet taller and had to outweigh Sparrowhawk by at least two hundred pounds, the blue glow around the woman--which I could only assume were biotics, or some equivalent--acted as a protective barrier and evened the fight. The white coats scrambled to stay out of their way, and several pods were damaged as they rampaged. 

Chaos broke out all over. Several new people jumped into the fight, some of them still in white boxer shorts. The bumpy guy in red and black drew his swords and ran around yelling about Mexican food. A petite woman with brown hair flew around the ceiling. I stayed over at the side with Jennifer.

It looked like most of the Parallels were up and out of their pods; I believed the one Gargoyle picked up and threw at Sparrowhawk was empty. At least, I hoped it was. Sparrowhawk caught it with her blue glowy lights and threw it back at Gargoyle, who dodged. 

The pod struck one of the big tanks and set off a massive explosion. 

\----====----

I came to in a cloud of dust. I coughed and groaned and waved my hand in front of my face to try to clear the air. The room was very dark, and it wasn't until I tried to move and felt something holding me in place that I realized I was flat on my back with a massive slab of concrete angled about a foot over me. 

I can't begin to calculate how lucky I was I didn't get crushed.

I pushed the concrete slab off of myself and light shined through the opening. I scrambled away and let the slab fall back down behind me, then looked around to take stock of everything. The room was a mess. All the tanks on the left wall were shredded scrap metal now. The Gargoyle was face-down on the floor by the right side wall, his wings were broken and tattered, and he laid in a pool of blood. The white coats were scattered all across the room, some moving but most completely still. The fluorescent lights were broken and torn down from the ceiling; the light in the room came from a massive hole in the ceiling over me. I looked up through the hole and saw a tall building rise up beside us, sunlight reflected off the windows and facade. Whatever building we were in, it must be a fairly small one compared to the surroundings.

The pod-people who were still alive and conscious started to pull themselves up. I turned to look for Jennifer Ortega, and quickly found her. A piece of metal rebar pierced her chest and continued out her back, and another large piece of the concrete ceiling covered her legs. I threw the concrete away behind me, then dropped down on my knees beside her to look at the piece of rebar, but there was nothing I could do--she was already dead. 

"I'm sorry," I whispered to her. I wanted to say something, a memorial of some sort. That's what you did, right? I had no idea. Words were never my thing, I preferred numbers. After a moment, I settled on, "You were kind. Thank you."

I took a deep breath and looked up, away from the body. I looked up at the building above, the sky reflected in the windows. Shadows flashed in the window over and over, and then I thought I caught a glimpse of a silver chariot fly by. Over the ringing in my ears, I thought I could hear screams and explosions coming from up there.

I needed to find out what was going on out there.

The ceiling in the room was about nine feet high, and the concrete ceiling itself looked about three feet thick. I looked around the room for somewhere I could get a better vantage point or something I could climb to see what was going on outside. The pile of concrete slabs looked to angle up the nearby wall to give me a five-, maybe six-foot ledge I could use to get a better vantage point.

I picked my way over to the rubble. As I got closer, I realized it wasn't just pure concrete--there was concrete, but there were also layers of dirt, sand, limestone, and asphalt. I froze and looked up at the hole in the ceiling in shock.

That wasn't the roof of this building, I realized. That was a road--we were underground!

I scrambled up to the top of the ledge and gave another glance at the room. The guy in the red and black with the swords was up and moving around again, as was Sparrowhawk and a few other pod-people. Otherwise, it looked like a whole lot of casualties. But now that I was closer to the hole in the ceiling, I could definitely hear screams from out there. Explosions, too. 

I reached up my hands to gauge the distance. The ledge I climbed onto put my fingertips only a foot or two below the street outside, but it was still a good five or six feet in front of me. I would have to jump, grab a hold, and pull myself up. Hopefully this Ultimate Warrior body they gave me would be able to do that--he was a strong guy, at least, right? I should be able to do this.

I jumped before I could overthink it.

I jumped way too hard. I cleared the distance too easily; I sprang up and over and slammed chest-first into the... either the ceiling or the ground, I wasn't sure which. My arms made it high enough to grab onto the asphalt, but my head snapped forward when I hit and smashed my nose into the ground. "Ow! Mother--" I grumbled, and only two-plus decades of watching my language around students kept me from more. My eyes watered. I blinked the tears away and looked out, only to see a weird metal alien thing turn toward me from a few yards away. 

There was nothing I could do as it ran forward and kicked me in the face. My nose exploded in pain. I lost my grip, flew back into the hole, and landed on the ledge I jumped from.

The weird alien thing raised a rifle and shot me in the chest.

\-----======-----

I came to on my back.

I gasped and my hands reached up to my chest. I found a small, nickel-sized hole in my top, but otherwise I was fine. My nose didn't even hurt.

_ Don't overthink it _ , I told myself. _ Just keep moving! _

I stood up and looked around. The room looked exactly the same, just about, except more of the pod-people were moving about. Sparrowhawk had one of the white coats on his feet, an older guy with salt-and-pepper hair and medium-dark skin, her shoulder under his to keep him up. The guy with the swords and red bodysuit had his eyes on me, his head tilted to the side like a dog who saw something confusing.

It didn't matter. Up above was someone who kicked and shot me. 

I climbed up onto my concrete ledge again, this time in a matter of only a few small hops. I was confident this body could make the jump all the way up, maybe even enough to let me land on my feet in the road. It would take everything I had, I was sure, so I made sure I had a good footing and leaped--

\--way, way too far.

I leaped out of that hole like I was shot from a cannon. I have no idea how high I would have gone, or where I would have landed. It sounded like a ridiculous word problem I might give my students:  _ if you leap out of a hole with an initial acceleration of twenty-five meters per second at a trajectory of-- _

I crashed head-first into one of those flying chariots, though, so that killed my trajectory.

I fell onto a parked car by the curb, bounced, and flopped face-down onto the asphalt. My right shoulder and ribs took most of the punishment from the car, while my nose got yet another kiss from the asphalt. I groaned and rolled over just to come face-to-face with the same fucking alien who shot me before. Its head tilted to the side, it let out a loud shriek before it raised its rifle and shot me again, point blank in the chest.

\-----======-----

I came to on my back.

Again.

Again again? I lost count. 

Was that my life, now? I wake up repeatedly on my back in strange places, hurt after being shot and falling and bleeding, grateful I opened my eyes at least. No family. No wife and daughters to go home to. Nowhere to relax--

I opened my eyes and saw that same fucker who shot me, just a few feet away. It turned around after it shot me and walked away; I don't know how long I was out, but unless it stood above me to gloat for a while, it must not have been long at all. After being shot point blank. Again. 

Yanked away from everything. Can't go back. Can't even die to get out.

I came to a conclusion: Fuck  _ all of this _ .

I scrambled up to my feet with a rough, wordless scream and rushed the alien. It turned around and shrieked at me just before I struck with an overhand right. It's head snapped back and it collapsed down to the street. I dropped down into full mount and drove my fists down into its face, left-right, left-right, until the metal place across the face deformed. I drew back both fists and three claws extended from each fist. I screamed as loud as I could and drove both claws into its stupid ugly face.

I looked up and screamed out my rage at the street. Two other blue, metal aliens shot me point blank.

\-----======-----

I came to face down, half on the street and half on top of the dead alien. 

All in all, Sir Lancelot, I think flat on my back is more my idiom.

I lifted my head and looked down the street. Six of the aliens lined up facing a group of people rushing to get to cover in one of the buildings. The two who shot me strode to join them. I pulled my legs up underneath me and a lock of hair fell into my face. I brushed it out of the way and felt my mask--my face was still mostly covered. There was a small hole under my left eye and a bigger one along the top of my head along the right side, where my hair fell out from. I tucked it in as best I could. It had been a long time since I had to worry about hair. 

I looked down at my hands and tried to make the claws come out again. They slid out with a brief sting between the knuckles, three long and sharp metal claws. I realized--they hadn't made me the Ultimate Warrior, they'd made me into an ultimate warrior, someone with a metal skeleton and a healing factor that could bring me back from death. 

Someone screamed for help. 

I looked up at the aliens. Fuck it--like Victor Criss at the apocalyptic rock fight, if I was here, I was gonna deal out some fucking damage.

"Hey!" I screamed at the aliens. I stood up and brandished my claws in front of me. "If you want to shoot someone, shoot me!" Four of the six aliens looked over at me, including the two who shot me the most recent time. They raised their rifles, and I relaxed and let my reflexes take over. 

I leaped over their shots into a backflip that took me up onto the top of the closest streetlamp behind me. The aliens tracked me with their rifles, but I still had time to flick each wrist at them before I leaped away again. Two balls of white, sticky substance shot from the bracers on my wrists and hit perfectly on the barrel of the two closest rifles; when the aliens tried to shoot, the weapons exploded with enough force to destroy their arms and fling them back onto the ground.

My second leap took me to my left, and I landed on the wall of the building.  _ Wait, what? No, stupid, don't think, just keep moving! _ I spun along the wall, hands and feet holding me up, as I avoided more fire. After two full rotations, I shot a long line from my wrists that stuck high up on the building across the street and leaped off into the air. I swung over into the line of six and struck the third one down feet-first. My double kick to the chest sent it careening back into a parked vehicle, and with a neat backflip I came down on top of the one before it with my claws extended.

"Wooo, go Spidey go!" a voice called from back the way I came. "I got your back, buddy! Maximum effort!"

I spun and threw the alien on my claws at the one closest to my original position, who ducked. I shot a webline behind the projectile alien, caught the one who ducked, and yanked him toward me. One punch to the head later and its brains were out on the wrong side of its skull.

I turned to the other two and saw the bumpy red-suited guy from before slice them up with his two swords. He turned to me before the second one fell and said, "Cool slow-mo walking away shot," as the alien fell to the ground behind him. He stopped after two steps, though. "Holy shit! You're like Spider-Man and Wolverine combined! I'm so hard right now."

I blinked and retracted my claws. I hadn't noticed it before, but the guy spoke with a rough English accent. After a moment, I said, "I don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about, but I'm still going to go with ' _ eww _ '."

The guy laughed. "Fair enough, mate. I'm Neville, but call me Deadpool." He walked over and extended his hand.

"Uh, Logan now, apparently?" I replied. I shook his hand. "I don't think I have a nickname, though."

"What did your locker say?"

"Wolf-Spider?"

He winced hard enough it was visible through a thick leather face mask. "Ouch. That name fucking blows. Come up with something better." He gestured wildly with one of his swords. "We really got to work on your branding, you know? Go wider on the whole public awareness campaign--"

"Do you know what's going on here?" I cut him off. I got the impression that, left to his own devices, this guy could talk all day and still say absolutely nothing.

"Oh, those Traveler fuckers? They're completely full of it," Deadpool answered immediately. "I don't give two fucks what they wanted, those guys can bite my bumpy red arse."

"No, I mean--" I waved my hands to indicate everything around us. "--what's going on here?"

"Oh! Yeah. Battle of New York. Chiutari invasion. Loki and the Tesseract. All that."

"What the fork are you talk--The fork--" I looked around at the devastated city block around me helplessly. "What the shirt! I can't even forking curse!?"

"Fuckin' MPAA," Deadpool commiserated. "MCU's PG, so is the X-Verse. Good thing I'm rated R, baby. Fuck yeah. Can't stop Deadpool--"

"I don't have the first clue what the fork you're talking about," I told him.

"We're in the movie, mate." Deadpool stopped talking for a second, then shrugged. "Look, you can hang around and meet up with Scar-Jo, the Chrisses, and RDJ, but me? I'm off to go enjoy being an immortal badass ninja avocado." He waved his sword and gave a grand bow, then jogged past me, back toward the hole in the road. Several flying chariot things, like the one I crashed into during my exit from underground, turned the corner and flew overhead. 

"Maximum effort!" Deadpool yelled again. He jumped onto the back of a car, then up to a streetlight, then leaped out at one of the chariots. His sword stabbed into the shoulder of the driver, and he spun around and kicked the gunner off the back. The chariot swerved, then flew around another corner and out of my sight.

I stared where he disappeared. "I think I hate that forking guy."

==============


	2. The Battle of New York

_Loki dropped from the top of Stark Tower onto a flying chariot..._

_On the ground, Hawkeye, Black Widow, and Captain America watched the God of Mischief strafe the street perpendicular to their position._

_"They're fish in a barrel down there," Cap said._

_"We got this," Black Widow assured him. "It's good. Go."_

_"You think you can hold them off?" Cap confirmed._

_"Captain," Hawkeye said, "it would be my genuine pleasure."_

\-----======-----

After Deadpool took off to skewer aliens and drop f-bombs, the aliens attacked en-masse from the opposite direction. Flying chariots swept over the street and fired down at helpless civilians. Gas tanks exploded; cars flipped into the air. People screamed, hid, and ran for cover.

Years ago, I read an interview with Tim Kennedy, an MMA fighter and special forces soldier. He spoke about how, when he first joined the military, a helicopter took his unit hot into a firefight. He jumped from the chopper under live fire and sprinted toward the source of the gunfire--something, he acknowledged, that was not a normal instinct to have. As he ran, he said, he looked over at the rest of his unit and realized that, to a man, they all ran toward the enemy as well. He said that was the moment he felt he was where he truly belonged.

I was never a run-towards-danger person. I went to a boring high school and stayed close to home for college. I dated my wife for eight years before I proposed. I taught math in the suburbs and stayed at the same school for fifteen years. My life was never about danger, adventure, or risk. 

But when I heard the screams and explosions, I turned and ran toward the alien attackers. 

I leaped over the hole that lead to the lab without looking down. The street I ran down dead-ended into a wider avenue, but the intersection was blocked by several cars knocked into my street by the blasts. To my left, a group of civilians and cops scrambled around for cover and tried to fight off the aliens as best they could. To my right, the direction the chariots flew, I saw a man in blue with a circular shield leap down from an overpass and sprint towards the crowds. I might have never seen any of the MCU films, but I certainly recognized my wife's favorite Avenger, the human Dorito, her one free hall pass:

Captain America.

He looked over at me as he ran, then gave a double-take. You'd think a guy in a skin-tight outfit with a mask wouldn't be so surprised to see another guy in a skin-tight outfit with a mask. Whatever. I had the better angle to get to the aliens on the ground first, albeit only by a second. "Go help people!" I yelled. "I got these forkers!" 

_Damnit. I just yelled fork at Captain America._

Seven of the alien guys stood in a group together, back-to-back, firing at people all around. I dove over the line of cars between us and crashed claws-first into the closest alien. It staggered back two steps but kept its feet; I used it as a fulcrum to swing my legs forward and dropkick it. As it flew back into another alien, I backflipped and fired two weblines, one to each side that each struck an alien in the face. I yanked the aliens to me and sliced them apart as they flew by. 

A red, white, and blue shield smashed into the head of the next alien by me. It ricocheted back to Captain America as he sprinted through the skirmish.

"Thanks!" I yelled as I fired a web ball to cover the barrel of a rifle. 

"You're welcome!" he called back over his shoulder. 

The alien fired into the web ball, and its rifle exploded. I push-kicked it in the chest and it rocketed back into the last alien of the group. The two tumbled to the ground and I leaped forward to finish them off with my claws.

"--I need a perimeter as far back as thirty-ninth," I heard Captain America finish. I turned that way and saw him on top of a car, talking to a police officer.

"Why the hell should I take orders from you?!" one of the cops exclaimed. 

Several aliens dropped down behind Captain America. I ran toward him, but he quickly took them out--and impressed the officer, who turned to the others around him and began issuing the Captain's orders.

Captain America jumped down off the car and walked over to me. "Appreciate the assist," he said, and held his hand out to me. "Steve Rogers."

He looked different than Chris Evans. Captain America was thicker, built more like an old-time strongman than the early twenty-first century ideal of fitness and strength. His core and torso were thick with muscle, and his back was broad and powerful. He looked like he could rip an oak tree out of the ground. 

His eyes were kind. I always thought that was a stupid thing to say, but the man really had a kindness about him separate from his ability to dish out violence. I could tell the devastation around us bothered him greatly, but he pushed that back in order to focus on the fight. His presence was powerful, just the force of his personality and integrity bored into me as he waited for my name--

Oh fuck, fuck, fuck. There was _no way_ I was introducing myself to my wife's ultimate crush as _Wolf-Spider_. She would never let me live it down. 

What should I call myself? I didn't want to use my real name, and I didn't identify as "Logan," for all that Jennifer Ortega said it was my name now. The name _Ultimate Warrior_ came to me, but it sounded entirely too pretentious -- but wrestlers often had cool names, so that was a good place to start. Stone Cold Steve Austin? No, he probably existed here and I didn't want him after me. The Rock? Chris Jericho? No, I wanted a codename, not an alias. I thought about high-flyers soaring through the air, and that combined with the image of the Captain's shield from just a moment ago to give me the answer.

"Call me Ricochet," I said. We clasped hands. I could practically hear my wife squee in my head. _I'm sorry. You can never wash that hand again,_ I could practically hear her say.

More explosions from behind me. Cap looked over my shoulder and his eyes widened. "Gotta go," he said.

"Lead the way, I'll follow," I said. He nodded and we ran off together.

\-----======-----

Black Widow and Hawkeye looked different than what I remembered, too, although my memory of them was not nearly so engrained as that of Captain America. 

Hawkeye blended in to the battlefield, a skill that seemed deliberate; when I looked directly at him, he shifted as if uncomfortable with the scrutiny. He was much bigger than I expected. His arms were massive, not with show-muscles but the powerful kind you see on farmers who throw bales of hay every day for years on end. However, his back was where most of his size came from. I had no idea what the draw on his bow was, but he looked like he could pull anything.

Black Widow had presence. Whereas Hawkeye faced into the background, Widow hid in plain sight under a false image. She was petite, but broad-shouldered and strong, built like an Olympic gymnast or swimmer. Her hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail and a few splotches of blood marred her face, but the sharp look in her eyes never waivered.

Cap and I arrived just as alien reinforcements pressed Hawkeye and Black Widow's position. Cap smashed shield-first into the alien vanguard, and I swung in over him, a whirlwind of claws and webs. A few moments after our arrival, lightning heralded Thor's presence, and we earned a brief respite in the battle. 

"Cap," Widow said as she reloaded. "Who's your new friend?"

"Calls himself Ricochet," Cap answered. "He's taken a lot of these guys down." He turned to Thor. "What's the story upstairs?"

"The power surrounding the cube is impenetrable," Thor replied.

They all turned to look at the sky for a moment, then Widow said, "How do we do this?"

"As a team," Cap said. I could feel the resolve in his voice.

"I have unfinished business with Loki," Thor stated.

"Yeah? Get in line," Hawkeye quipped, although I could tell he meant it.

"Save it," Cap ordered. "Loki's gonna keep this focused on us, and that's what we need. Without him, these things could run wild. We got Stark up top, he's gonna need us--"

Captain America cut off at the sound of an old motor bike engine. We all turned to see an average-sized man with a blue shirt, work pants, and rumpled dark hair ride up. The others all walked over to greet him, and I followed at the back. 

"So," the man greeted, his arms outstretched. "This all seems...horrible." He looked at us all, then paused when he saw me. "Hi. You're new."

I nodded. "Enough for brand spankings." Everyone turned and stared at me. I shrugged. "Sorry. I felt pressured to quip. I won't do it again."

Whenever I made a bad joke in class, my students all got this expression on their faces, a kind of cross between pity and the face you make when someone farts. I found it interesting that the Avengers got basically the same face as a bunch of high schoolers.

Captain America shook his head and said, "Stark, we got him." After a pause, he said, "Just like you said."

I leaned over to Thor, the closest one to me, and whispered, "Does he have an imaginary friend or something?"

Thor looked tired, but grinned. "I cannot discount that, but he speaks now to Stark, the metal man in the sky." Iron Man. Got it.

A loud crash brought our attention back to the battle. A monstrous worm thing followed a red and gold humanoid figure around the corner and clipped the edge of a building as it turned. They flew straight down the street toward us.

The new guy stepped toward them.

"Doctor Banner," Captain America said. "Now might be a really good time to get angry."

Then it hit me--that's the Hulk. My wife made me watch this scene several times. She LOVED it. I can't begin to tell you just how jealous she would be that I was here for it. 

"That's my secret, Cap," Banner said. "I'm always angry."

He hulked out--and, wow, the Hulk was WAY bigger than I expected. He was green and eight or nine feet tall and completely full of muscles. I always thought that the part where he punched the big worm was stupid and ignored all the laws of physics; in person, I had _no problem with it_. 

The Hulk was driven back about a dozen feet by the impact, but the worm fared worse. It arched up over him, and the metal armor plates along its hide were forced off. Iron Man fired into the monster and it exploded in a shower of metal and gore. Several pieces struck me, but I shrugged them off.

The aliens surrounding us shrieked their defiance as we circled up together. Iron Man descended to land beside us, Widow reloaded--

"Is someone...singing?" Hawkeye asked.

I looked up at an open window across from us. Deadpool hung over the sill, a police megaphone in hand, and bellowed some sort of DA-DA-DAH-DAAAA that I assumed he meant to be music. After a moment, I realized I recognized it.

"Oh, for fork's sake," I groaned. "It's the forking theme song."

\-----======-----

More aliens came through the portal, including several of the big worms that functioned as both flying tanks and troop carriers.

Cap split the team up. Stark had the perimeter, Thor had the portal entrance, and Hawkeye caught a ride from Stark up to a perch on a building. I stayed on the ground with him and Black Widow. 

We fought a never-ending tide. The Chitauri, as Cap and Black Widow called them, had no fear of death. They threw themselves against us again and again, no matter how many fell. Black Widow held our position and kept in contact with the other Avengers; Cap and I ranged out and back to bring the fight to the aliens and help any civilians we saw in danger. We came back every minute or two in order to check in.

I swung back and saw Black Widow surrounded by a crowd of Chitauri. She had two semi-auto pistols she used in tandem with some sort of wrist-mounted shock system, but neither was designed for large-scale battle--they were the tools of a spy, not a soldier. Her skill was impeccable; I couldn't compare, but my weapons killed more efficiently and I shrugged off damage that would put her down. 

I dove into the group claws-first and took down two before they realized I approached. By that time, I'd developed a rudimentary fighting style--I kept moving, sliced up anything that wasn't human, and web-balled or web-yanked anything farther than fifteen feet away from me. It wasn't pretty, and I took a lot of incidental damage, but it got the job done.

"So what's your story?" Black Widow asked as she shot an alien in the face. 

I snagged the last of them with a webline and threw it head-first into a concrete guardrail, then turned to Black Widow with my head cocked. "What?"

She kept an eye out for the next wave as she checked her ammo. "I mean, I get the name. You fight like a super bouncy ball covered in ginsu knives." I snickered, and she gave me a quick, sidelong glance and smirk before she continued lookout. "But that's all I know."

I shrugged. "If the 'brand spanking new' dad joke didn't give it away, I work a lot better when I'm given a specific thing to respond to rather than generalizations. Just ask."

"What's your name?"

"Apparently, it's Logan."

She paused, and turned to me. "Apparently?"

I shrugged again. "I know what I think, but what I think is completely forking insane and impossible, so I don't know if I really know it. In the logical conundrum sense of knowing something, I mean." She stared at me, unblinking. I sighed. "I'm in the middle of an existential identity crisis and I'm fairly forking grateful for the presence of a convenient outlet for my emotions."

She opened her mouth, then paused and seemed to re-think whatever she was about to say. "Why do you keep saying fork?"

"Because this is the bad place?" I guessed with a shrug.

She blinked in confusion, her face blank, but before she could reply Captain America jumped up to the overpass from the street down below. Black Widow shook her head, checked her weapon one more time, sighed, then leaned against a car. "Captain, none of this is going to mean a damn thing if we don't close that portal."

"Our biggest guns couldn't touch it," he replied.

"Well, maybe it's not about guns," she argued.

Cap glanced at me, then looked back to her. "Wanna get up there, you're gonna need a ride." He nodded his head over toward me, and they both turned to stare. 

I opened my mouth, paused, and then shook my head. "I got nothing that isn't going to get me punched in the face -- but yeah, I'll take you up there."

They looked back at each other. Cap cocked his head; Black Widow closed her eyes and sighed. Several chariots flew overhead, and she looked up at them. "I guess my only other choice is one of those."

Another wave of Chitauri gathered a block or two down, headed our way. "Cap, you sure about this?" I asked. "It's gonna leave you down here alone." 

He nodded, his expression resolute. "I can handle it. Get her up there, cover her while she figures it out." I held out my hand, and he shook it. I wished I watched the movies with my wife; meeting him, I fully understood her feelings. He cracked his neck, then ran toward the Chitauri nearest us.

I turned to Black Widow. "So, how do we do this?" she asked.

I shrugged. "Scientific method?"

She stared at me. "No. New plan: let's hijack one of those chariots." 

\-----======-----

We landed on the roof of Stark Tower after Hawkeye blew up the chariot chasing us. An old man was sprawled on the ground over by the edge of the roof, and Black Widow went to him immediately. Three chariots flew by and shot at us. I ran over and covered Black Widow with my body; one of the shots hit me on the left shoulder. It hurt like hell, but I stayed conscious until it healed.

"Huh, that's handy," she said.

The chariots turned around and headed our way for another pass. "They're coming back," I warned. "Look, I'm not going to be any help figuring this out. You got this?"

Black Widow looked at the older guy, then back at me. "Yeah, I got this. You gonna go help Cap?"

"No, you were right--we gotta close this. I'm gonna figure out a way to cover you." The chariots approached within firing range in a flying-v formation and opened up on our position again. I sprinted to the edge and leaped off toward them. They were close enough for me to reach the one in front, and I made short work of the pilot. I leaped from that chariot to the one on the right and shot a webline to yank the pilot from the left chariot. The pilot of the chariot on the right stabbed me in the shoulder, but I sliced the blade in half and continued to slice until the Chitauri dropped to the ground. 

With a grimace, I yanked the blade from my shoulder and took the controls of the chariot. I turned it around and flew back to Stark Tower. "Get that thing closed!" I yelled as I flew past, up above the device toward the portal. 

The Chitauri swarmed me. They shot the chariot out from under me, and I leaped off before it exploded. I web-swung between chariots, fought, and went after any of them that turned toward Stark Tower. I lost track of time; the fight was intense, I was constantly on the move. The Chuitari hit me constantly. I dropped in free-fall from well above the tops of the New York skyscrapers several times, with only my web shooters to save me.

Until they didn't.

I flew a captured chariot past the portal opening and shot up several newly-arriving Chuitari. The survivors returned fire, and one hit the chariot beneath me. I leaped off and flipped over, back to the ground, and fired my right web shooter up at a passing chariot. This had been my general strategy up in the air: swing on an enemy chariot and either use that to propel myself to another enemy or pull myself up to take over the vehicle for myself.

My web shooter cut out before the web made it halfway to the chariot.

My brain froze. "Oh, shirt," I muttered as I fell. 

I flipped back over just in time to see a sharp metal spire impale me.

\-------------

When I woke up again, for the first time it was to searing pain.

The metal spire on the top of the building went straight through my gut. Whatever the Travelers Initiative people did to this body kept me alive, but the pain was awful. Everything above the injury hurt, but my hips and legs were completely numb. I tried to push myself up and off the spire, but the movement sent waves of even greater pain through me. I hadn't even realized that it was possible to hurt more than I already had.

"Oh, fork, okay," I said to myself. "That's not gonna happen." 

I looked around. I could see Stark Tower off to my left, only a block away. The portal was still open above it. I saw Black Widow move near the machine near the fallen scientist, some sort of staff or spear in her hands. I hoped she would be able to close the portal - I knew the Avengers succeeded in the movie, but not how, or whether I'd messed up the events. I could only hope.

I had to get myself free, and unfortunately, the only way I could think of was to cut myself free. 

I knew I could heal from the cut - well, I didn't know that, but I didn't care if I died, either, so it was moot. My fear was the fall afterwards. If I fell from the top of the building and hit the ground, would I die? Or would I be injured too gravely to heal, but not badly enough to die? My greatest fear was being too gravely injured to do anything, but not able to die, trapped in a broken body in this foreign world and unable to look for a way out. 

I knew that my right web shooter was empty, but maybe my left still had enough left. My goal was to get to Stark Tower again, to reunite with Black Widow and Captain America and the rest of the Avengers. I knew that, when this was over, they would be willing to help me. I raised my left arm and tried to fire a webline there - it worked! Apparently, only my right web shooter was empty. I tied the webline around my left wrist, as tight as I could. 

I took a deep breath. I watched as a missile headed toward Stark Tower, then turned up at the last second and sped through the portal. I closed my eyes tight, screwed up my courage, then extended my claws and sliced through my right side. Pain exploded in my body as I slid off of the spire and tumbled toward Stark Tower on my webline. 

Thankfully, I was unconscious before I hit the building.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter is written, just needs some revision and to settle for a bit. I should easily be able to stick to a chapter a month for a good while. If I don't post around this time next month, I probably showed this to my wife or something else equally stupid like that...


	3. The Endgame in the Beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the battle of New York.

_ "You should make a Facebook profile," Mendi told me.  _

_ I rolled my eyes. This was a long-standing minor disagreement between the two of us. My wife was a professor of physics at Georgia Tech University, and had gotten into Facebook when it was still college-only. I taught high school and believed that avoiding social media was a much better idea.  _

_ I looked over at her. She was on the couch, propped up with more pillows behind her than I cared to count. Her swollen belly rose in front of her, two weeks short of her due date. Her feet rested in my lap, hopefully less swollen after the foot massage I just finished. _

_ "Why? I'm never going to use it," I said. _

_ "You could post baby pictures on there," Mendi argued. "Isn't that your husbandly and fatherly duty?" _

_ "I thought my husbandly and fatherly duty was dirty diapers?" I teased. "Isn't that what you said? You're on input, I'm on output?" _

_ "You can have multiple duties." She smiled at me, her eyes twinkling, to let me know we were still having a light-hearted conversation. "But they all boil down to keeping me happy, don't they?" _

_ "There's ice cream in the freezer and I just rubbed your feet," I pointed out.  _

_ "Don't discount the hormones, I can change my mind at any moment." _

_ "I have lots of different flavors of ice cream," I assured her, "and I got plenty of foot rub lotion." I patted her feet, then pushed myself over on the couch until I was lying beside her, my head against her shoulder. "Not too many more nights like this," I said.  _

_ "Plenty more," she disagreed. Her hand came up and stroked my head, her fingers played with what little hair I still had on top of my head. "It'll just be a decade or two before we get them again."  _

_ I sighed. Our first child; it would change everything. I was excited, no doubt, but I knew that it meant I got a lot less of my wife's attention. "You know if I make a Facebook account, I'm never going to log in, right?" _

_ "I'll remind you," she offered. _

_ "How about I just give you the password and let you take care of it?" I expected her to roll her eyes and decline, but she went still and I could almost hear her thinking about it. It took me a moment, and then I realized, "You're just going to post all kinds of nerdy fandom stuff for me, aren't you?" She snickered, clearly delighted, and I sighed. "You're lucky I love you, you know." _

_ "Do you?" she asked, her voice light and teasing. "Even all fat and pregnant? I mean, it's been a while since you showed me." _

_ I wasn't the brightest person in the room, but I knew an invitation when I heard one. "Let's see what I can do about that," I whispered, and turned my head to kiss her neck-- _

\---===---

...I woke up on my back. The pain was gone, thankfully.

I grunted and rolled over onto my side. I looked up into the wide eyes of Black Widow, who stared at me with her hand over her mouth. "You--" she stammered. She spoke a few words in a language I didn't understand--Maybe Russian?--and waved her hand around her middle. "You were nearly cut in half, and you just--pulled back together again."

I looked down. My shirt was cut open, my stomach visible, and while there was a lot of blood there I could tell I was perfectly healed. I looked back up at Black Widow and just shrugged. "I don't know what to tell you. It's my first day."

"Hell of a first day," she said.

I chuckled at her deadpan delivery. "Yeah, for sure," I agreed. I pulled myself to my feet. While I was tired, I felt fine. No pain. "Did you get the portal closed?" 

"Yes."

A wave of relief washed through me. I closed my eyes, looked up at the ceiling, and sighed. Then a horrifying thought hit me:  _ now what _ ? I had no idea who I was here. No idea what I was supposed to do. 

"What is it?" Widow asked. 

I opened my eyes. "What?"

She looked at me with a stoic, puzzled expression. "You suddenly tensed up. We should be done, but you look more on edge now than when we were fighting."

I doubted she trusted me, but I knew I could trust her.  _ Might as well be completely open with her _ , I figured. "I woke up like this in a lab about half an hour before I met you. It--" I shook my head. "None of this matches any of the memories I have. I'm taller. I have hair. I have  _ abs _ . Honestly? All the mindless fighting, I think that was easier than trying to figure out what happens now."

She nodded. "Come on. The team's going to secure Loki, then we'll debrief and get some rest. You fought hard with us. Stick with me, I'll make sure you're taken care of."

I nodded. "Thank you. I appreciate it." 

\----===----

"All right, drinks?" Stark called out as he walked over to his bar. "Who wants drinks?"

The SHIELD agents who came up in the elevator moved around the room with purpose. I stood off to the side, out of the way, and tried to be as unobtrusive as possible.

"I'll take you up on that," Hawkeye said. He and Black Widow followed Stark over. Stark poured a shot of clear liquid - presumably vodka - which Black Widow threw back without hesitation.

One of the SHIELD agents, a tall, dark-skinned woman who looked vaguely familiar, walked over to me. "You all right?" she asked as she approached me. The question seemed off, though, as if she already knew the answer - which, considering I was covered in torn up clothes and blood, made me wonder if she knew something about me. That was confirmed when she came up close and whispered, "0256, I'm Traveler 0249. Endgame is a confirmed go. Come downstairs with me to get into position."

I was glad my mask still covered most of my face, or my confusion would've showed. I had no idea what "Endgame" was. It seemed a bit early for an endgame - Didn't we just get here? - but at least I knew why the woman looked familiar to me. She was one of the people in the pods, one of the ones who got involved in the big fight with Gargoyle. 

"Hey, Bowden, get over here," a rough-looking man called out from over by Loki. 

The woman near me, Traveler 0249, looked over her shoulder and replied, "Be right there." She turned back to me and whispered, "Thor and Stark will come down with us. You come, too. Got it?" She turned and headed over to the SHIELD agent who yelled for her without waiting for an answer from me.

Did I trust her?

I didn't really know anything about the Traveler's Initiative. Jennifer, the woman who was there when I woke, seemed nice, but that could have easily been a con. I didn't know anyone there, not really, but I did know who the Good Guys were supposed to be. I knew who my wife would trust in this situation.

Her opinion was always enough for me.

I looked over toward the bar and caught Black Widow giving me a subtle inquiring look. I shrugged and tilted my head over toward the elevator, a gesture I hoped she would interpret as, "They want me to go with them, can you come, too?" By the look on her face, I knew I failed.

She turned to the bar and poured two shots, then carried them over to me. "Here you go," she said as she handed me one of the shots. "You lost enough blood, I figure you could use a shot."

"Thanks," I said. We clinked the glasses together, then I lifted my mask, downed the shot, and pulled my mask back down again.

Why did I put my mask back down again? I had no idea what I looked like underneath. In the time since I woke up, I hadn't seen a mirror. My body was different, I knew that - I was taller, stronger, faster. I assumed my face was different, too. I realized I didn't want to show that face to anyone else yet. I wasn't ready to be seen as someone other than who I was. Well, any more than I already was.

"Here, let me help," Black Widow said. She pulled my head down more to her height and tucked my hair into the mask. I felt uncomfortable, leaned forward in front of her, and she smirked a little before she whispered, "What's going on?"

"Recognize one of 'em," I replied quietly. "She wants me to go down with them."

"What do you want to do?" 

"Fork if I know."

Stark wandered over, a bottle in hand. "Taking a shine to the new guy, Natasha?" he teased. 

I tried to pull back, but she kept my head in place. She gave Stark a sultry grin and said, "What if I am?" 

Stark laughed. "Far be it from me to complain about seducing someone on the job," he said. "I'd be there with you, except everyone here is a little heavily armed for my tastes."

Natasha let go of my head, and I stood up straight again. Bowden, the Traveler, gave me a quick look but never broke from her work. Easily distracted, Tony wandered off again, over toward the group of agents this time, and Natasha whispered, "Go with them, let's see what happens." I nodded.

\----===----

I stayed to the back and kept my eyes on Bowden as we rode the elevator down. (They made Hulk, who still hadn't reverted to - well, whoever he was normally - take the stairs. Good choice.) She was focused on her fellow SHIELD soldiers or whatever they were, and never looked my way.

The doors opened to the lobby and the soldiers led the way out. The lobby was very crowded, full of helmeted soldiers standing guard, suits bustling around trying to be important, and traumatized civilians being tended to by medical personnel.

Tony, Thor, and Natasha lead the way, the briefcase with the Tesseract tight in Tony's fist. We only got a few steps into the lobby before someone in an Iron Man costume, arc reactor and all, jumped in front of Tony. The mask flipped back, the same way Tony's did, and revealed the face of a teenage boy, probably somewhere around fifteen or sixteen years old.

"Mr. Stark! Mr. Stark!" the boy gushed. "I'm so glad I found you! I'm your number-one fan, I..."

The kid kept talking. Stark looked around the room in shock, an expression on his face that said he expected to find a hidden camera crew there to record him being pranked. Beside him, Thor looked vaguely amused by the kid's enthusiasm.

"Whoa, hold up, hold up," Stark interrupted. He held his free hand up almost directly in front of the kid's face to get him to stop babbling. Once the kid stopped, Stark waited a bit before he dropped his hand and asked, "Okay, who are you?"

"I'm Iron Kid!" the kid exclaimed. 

Time froze for a second as we all tried to parse that. Tony was the first to recover. "No you're not," he stated, his voice flat. 

"Oh, come on!" the kid complained. He held out his arms. "I reverse-engineered all your tech just by watching how it functioned and figuring out what you had to do to achieve that. I'm smart enough to keep up with you--"

"I work alone, kid," Stark said. 

He stepped to the kid's right to go around him, but the kid reached up and grabbed Stark's arm as he pushed past. Right as Iron Kid's metal gauntlet made contact with Stark, Tony froze, then dropped to the ground.

Thor immediately grabbed the kid by the front of his armor and hoisted him off the ground. "What did you do!?" he roared.

Natasha and I dropped down beside Stark. Someone shoved the briefcase out of the way. I looked over at Natasha, who looked up at me with a question in her eyes. A ripple of panic went through me at that -- this was Black Widow, of course she should know what to do! And this was  _ Tony Freaking Stark _ , I barely knew anything about the MCU but I knew he was a really major character and major characters  _ didn't die _ . 

"I--I didn't do it!" the kid stammered back. 

"You need to get out of the way!" someone hissed in my ear. "Let them work!"

"Fork off," I hissed back over my shoulder. 

Thor and Iron Kid edged their way in over Tony. "What is going on?" Thor rumbled.

"Looks like a malfunction in the arc reactor," the kid said. We all blinked and did a double-take; unlike before, he sounded calm, confident, and sure of himself. "It's causing a mild cardiac dysrhythmia. That's not the major issue, though. The arc reactor prevents the shrapnel from--"

"You need to MOVE!" the voice hissed in my ear again. They grabbed my suit at the nape of my neck and threw me backwards. I flew through the air and then crashed into the legs of someone behind me. We fell to the ground in a heap, both of us tangled up together.

"MMmmmph!" the person beneath (and on top of) me exclaimed. Confused, I lifted my head and looked right into the green eyes of Loki. Behind him, out of the briefcase, the Tesseract sat on the floor. I froze, my eyes widened in shock. 

"Yes!" Thor shouted in triumph behind me. "It worked!"

"We have a timeline breach!" a soldier to my right said. He spoke quietly enough that, outside of their helmet communications system, I bet only Loki and I heard him. "Repeat, breach in the timeline!" 

Loki and I looked at one another in confusion for a second. I turned to look at the soldier just in time to catch a rife butt in the face. The soldier quickly grabbed the Tesseract and turned back. "Loki, here--"

His eyes bulged as I leaped up at him, claws out. He obviously had no warning about my healing factor, and expected me to be out cold after that shot from his rifle. I hit him hard in the chest and took him down with an attack reminiscent of a Lou Thez Press; I landed in full mount and, with a inarticulate roar of rage, I stabbed him repeatedly.

"Wha-- The Tesseract!" Thor roared.

"OPEN FIRE!" the masked soldiers called. 

The lobby exploded into chaos.

Screams and gunfire erupted. The SHIELD soldiers who met us up in Stark's penhouse reacted immediately, scrambling to cover and returning fire. Natasha drew her pistols and spun behind Thor, who spun Mjolnir as a shield in front of them. Iron Kid dropped down and protected Stark from gunfire. A few of the agents and soldiers were hit, but neither Thor nor Iron Kid took any fire.

Two masked soldiers broke for the Tesseract while others covered them. I fired a webline from my left hand to grab the cube, but it sputtered out after only a quick shot. Luckily for me, the shot webbed the Tesseract to the floor. The soldiers gave each other a quick glance, then one dropped to his knees and pulled at the Tesseract.

The other spun and raised his rifle toward me. 

I jumped up and bounded the twenty feet toward the soldier. His aim was true and he didn't flinch at my charge; several rounds from his rifle ripped into my chest and legs, but they weren't enough to stop me. I sliced his rifle from his hands and ripped out his throat as I passed on my way to the soldier on his knees by the Tesseract. He looked up at the last second before I slammed my right fist into his chest. 

I was close enough to see his face through the visor. He sneered at me and, with his last breaths, said, "Fire... on the cube."

"Oh,  _ shirt _ ," I swore.

As one, almost all the other masked soldiers turned away from the SHIELD soldiers and the Avengers toward me. The two closest to Loki broke off the assault and ran to the Asgardian, but I never saw what they did to him. I grabbed the body of the masked soldier and spun him around to shield me from the hail of bullets that streamed my way, but it was only somewhat effective. I almost lost my balance from the impact of the rounds on the soldier, and many slipped past him to strike me in my arms, legs, neck, and body. 

I have no idea how long it lasted. Logically, it couldn't have been too long; with Thor, Black Widow, and the SHIELD agents at their unprotected backs, the renegade soldiers couldn't have held out for more than a minute. But it felt like forever. 

Every shot hurt. 

A lot.

I have no idea how often I was shot; my body healed fast enough that there was no way to tell. I felt hits all over, though. I even got hit in the head once or twice. Finally, though, the shots stopped. I dropped the dead soldier, his body now riddled with holes, and slumped to the ground.

"Loki!" Thor's voice thundered. 

I looked up. Two remaining masked soldiers led Loki toward me. They were only a few feet away from me, the two soldiers a step ahead of Loki, their weapons leveled at me. Loki's mask and manacles were removed, and he sneered at me as a pair of daggers appeared in his hands.

I pulled my feet under me and leaped forward. The soldiers fired, but I gritted my teeth and pushed through it to attack them. They fell quickly to my claws, weapons cut to pieces and bodies sliced up, and I continued on to Loki. 

I quickly learned the difference between the mediocre fighters I'd faced so far and a trained, deadly, experienced combatant like Loki. In this fight, I was out of my depth.

I swiped twice, and he nimbly danced out of the way without leaving range of his daggers. The two blades bit deep into me, and I screamed in pain and redoubled my attack. He kicked out my left leg just as I put weight on it, and I collapsed face-first to the floor. His daggers slammed into my back, four rapid strikes before I rolled to my left and swiped out with my right claws in an attempt to gut him from crotch to neck. Loki leaned back, my claws passed an inch or two from him, and then he leaned back into range and slit my throat.

I grabbed my throat as blood stopped pumping to my brain. Logically, I knew I'd heal -- not half an hour ago, I'd nearly cut myself in half and healed from that. But I couldn't think straight. 

Loki passed by me contemptuously, but only got two steps closer to the cube. Thor slammed into him from behind and drove him face-first onto the floor beside me, then set Mjolnir on top of his back. Loki tried to push up, but Mjolnir kept him pinned to the ground. 

I took a deep, gasping breath once my throat repaired itself. 

Thor reached out his hand. "Ricochet, are you whole?" he asked.

"Yeah, I'm good," I said. I took his hand and let him pull me to my feet. My vision narrowed, spots all over, and I pitched forward to my hands and knees. "Whoa, maybe not," I muttered.

"Stark! Widow!" Thor shouted. 

I heard a commotion nearby, but couldn't focus. I rolled over to my back --  _ when had I fallen to the ground? _ \-- and looked up at the ceiling. A moment later, Stark and Natasha's faces appeared above me.

"Ricochet, what's going on?" Natasha said.

"Think... found my limits," I mumbled. 

"We've got medics coming," she reassured me. "You're going to be okay."

"S'ok if I'm not," I said. "Go home. Wife. Kids." 

Stark and Natasha looked at each other for a moment, confused. I'm not sure how much of what I said actually involved successfully-formed words. I sighed and closed my eyes.

"Hey, stay with us, okay?" Natasha said. 

In the background, I heard Stark call for a medic, but the sound was distant and tinny. The world started to fade out as Natasha reached up to push my mask back away from my face. The last thing I saw was the shock in her eyes as she saw my face. She hissed and Stark cursed. "Jesus! He's just a kid!" 

Everything went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and we have our first significant difference from the events of the films.
> 
> This chapter is a little bit later going up than I intended. School this year is a lot more work than most years; I teach both in-person and distance learners, so basically everything has to be done twice. I have chapter four most of the way ready to go, only a little more left. WandaVision is very interesting to me, just watched episode four tonight. That's giving me fun ideas of where I can take this. 
> 
> I hope you're still enjoying it, if you got this far. Next few chapters will deal with the Fracture and the Travelers' Initiative in more depth.


End file.
